Images of Super Bowl ticket-holders crammed together as thousands waited for New Jersey Transit trains led to a chilling initial reaction from Indiana State criminology professor Mark Hamm.

"Thankfully, Eric Rudolph is in prison," Hamm told NJ.com.

Rudolph, serving four life sentences for a series of anti-abortion bombings, was the perpetrator of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing at the 1996 Summer Games, the second-deadliest terror attack at a sporting venue in U.S. history after last year's Boston Marathon bombing.

Hamm said those stuck at Secaucus Junction before the Super Bowl and a similar huddled mass stuck in the Meadowlands afterward could have been inviting targets for terrorists.

"There was certainly a potential for a lone wolf attack," Hamm said.

A lone wolf is a terrorist who acts on his or her own, outside the traditional
framework of organized terror groups like al Qaeda.

"If you look across the landscape you see the greatest threat to mass gatherings in the
United States is the homegrown violent extremist," NFL Director of Strategic Security Jeff Miller said previously. "This is somebody who is off (law enforcement's) grid and through the use of propaganda on the Internet is encouraged to act out."

"Are you serious?" asked a public relations person at NJ Transit. "Talk to Homeland
Security."

The PR person hung up the phone as NJ.com was in the middle of asking for the
employee's name.

NJ.com had contacted the Transportation Security Agency, the division of Homeland Security that had approximately 30 employees at the station. Ross Feinstein, press secretary for the TSA, said his agency was in a support role and that NJ Transit police was the overseeing agency at Secaucus Junction.

"We were serving at the request of our transpiration partner," Feinstein told NJ.com. "In this case, it was New Jersey Transit and the New Jersey Transit Police. We were assisting
with screening of passengers' bags."

An NFL official said the bottleneck at the train station occurred because fan began showing up to Secaucus Junction earlier than expected. NJ Transit and the NFL grossly underestimated the number of riders who would use the train -- roughly 33,000. (The
estimate had been 12,000 to 15,000 riders.) Secaucus Junction was soon overrun with
passengers, some unleashing a "Jersey sucks!" chant.

"Passenger delays to the Meadowlands had nothing to do with TSA operations," Feinstein said.

An NFL spokesman referred all questions to NJ Transit and the TSA.

Feinstein said it only took a a few seconds for TSA agents to search search bags. There was also private security on site to make sure passengers to MetLife Stadium had valid Super Bowl tickets.

Secaucus Junction had radiation detection devices, dogs trained in bomb detection and other security measures in use, but Hamm isn't certain that could have prevented a lone wolf.

"Anything could have happened," Hamm said. "Somebody along the lines of (alleged Aurora, Colo., theater shooter) James Holmes could have been thinking of a scenario like that. Somebody could have been looking to make a huge statement."